Review: Margin Call

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Margin CallIn the first decade of this century, rocket scientists who ruled the back rooms of Wall Street discovered something they touted as a real Philosopher's Stone. Through financial alchemy, they created Frankenstein's monster. This monster was named Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO). CDO's were created using something known as The Formula. The Formula theorized that packages of mortgages could be mashed together and sliced apart into "good" parts and "bad" parts. The problem is that The Formula relied on a base set of assumptions that history shows were faulty to the core.

It is not possible to turn lead into gold and a sow's ear will always be a sow's ear no matter how much you want it to be a silk purse. Margin Call illustrates what happens when a financial institution realizes that the bag of gold they hold is in reality a bag of lead.

Margin Call opens with a scene that could have been straight taken from Up in the Air. Employees are called into managers' offices where HR awaits with bad news that has been all too common these days. One of the employees being "let go" at this financial institution is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a manager in the risk management department. As Dale is leaving, he hands Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) a USB drive with some of his latest work. He implores Peter to continue this work instructing him to be careful with it. Peter Sullivan burns the midnight oil completing Dale's work.

It's at this point we know the company is in deep Bandini (extra credit if you know what that means). Sullivan immediately raises the red flag and calls in his manager Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who brings in the upper management of the company, one by one, to deal with this crisis.

Margin Call is the feature directorial debut for J.C. Chandor, who also wrote the script. As the movie made the rounds in Hollywood, it eventually landed on the desk of Zachary Quinto, who is one of the producers of the movie. The strength of the script and Quinto's involvement helped secure some major names for this film including Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Simon Baker.

The beautiful part of this movie is that the actors' performances were top notch. With a cast like this, things can go right or wrong. In this movie's case, things went right. The only beef I had with the script were some pedantic things the CEO said during some of the crisis management meetings. Other than that I found this movie to be authentic and well done.

Greed, vanity, pride, gluttony and vanity. To some these are known as deadly sins. To the Wall Street of 2008, these were components of their business plans. Margin Call demonstrates what happens when Wall Street wizards were called to atone for their sins.